Published: January 20

Just two days after broad Web protests of the proposed
anti-piracy bills known as SOPA and PIPA, lawmakers have delayed action
on the measures. Hayley Tsukayama reports:
The main sponsor of a House bill targeting online piracy
announced Friday that he will postpone further action on the measure
that has triggered fierce protests, blackouts from Internet sites and some rethinking among lawmakers.

The action by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) on the Stop Online
Piracy Act came a couple of hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid (D-Nev.) said that he would delay a cloture vote on a similar
Senate bill, the Protect IP (Intellectual Property) Act.
The bills are intended to
narrowly address the problem of piracy on foreign Web sites. They
differ slightly, but both measures grant the Justice Department the
power to order Web sites to remove links to sites that are suspected of
pirating copyrighted materials. Proponents of the legislation, including
movie studios and recording companies, say that the bill safeguards
American intellectual property and protects consumers against
counterfeit goods. But opponents argue that the legislation gives the
federal government too much power to take control of Web sites and
amounts to a form of Internet censorship.
“I have heard from the
critics, and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed
legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said in a
statement. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best
to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American
inventions and products.”
The decisions came just two days after
prominent Web sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit darkened their sites
for 24 hours in protest and, along with others, such as Google,
encouraged visitors to urge their Congress members not to support the
bill. The sites collected signatures from millions of users opposed to
the measures, and several co-sponsors of the measures withdrew their
support of the online piracy legislation.
Smith said the House
Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation.
Markup on the bill, which began in December, had been slated to continue
in February.
Smith had remained firm in his resolve to move ahead
with discussion of the bill earlier this week but said Friday that he
is willing to work with copyright owners and Internet companies to
develop a consensus on the best approach to stopping piracy on the Web.Sen. Ron Wyden called the delays a major victory for grassroots advocacy groups. Greg Sargent writes:
In a huge victory for grassroots online organizing, the Senate
Dem leadership announced this morning that it was indefinitely
postponing votes on the PIPA bill — the companion to SOPA — in the wake
of massive protests.
The next question: Does the Senate Dem
leadership really understand that its approach was a major threat to
what makes the Internet a democratic force and that it needed a complete
overhaul?
I just got off the phone with Senator Ron Wyden, the
primary driver of opposition to the bill within the Senate, and he
confirmed that the leadership grasps the depth of the problems with its
approach, and is ready to address them head on.

“I talked to Senator Schumer last night, and I believe it’s going
to be a new day in the Senate,” Wyden said. “What we’ve seen over the
last few weeks from the grassroots is a time for the history books.” The
win is a triumph over very powerful special interests, such as the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, major content providers, and big unions, who had
supported the bills.
Wyden and other opponents had three primary objections to the
bills: They would have dramatically changed the domain name system,
potentially tampering with the “architecture” of the internet, as Wyden
puts it. They could have led to censorship, because they gave the U.S.
Attorney General the power to seek court orders to take down web sites
accused of piracy. And they could have created a legal quagmire within
which big content companies could have crushed small start-ups.

“Senator Schumer has always been straight with me, and he has really
now come to understand what’s happened in technology,” Wyden said.Prior to the Congressional action Friday, GOP candidates for
president offered their stances on SOPA at a debate Thursday in South
Carolina. Sarah Halzack reports:
At Thursday night’s Republican primary debate in
South Carolina, the four remaining candidates largely sought to draw
contrasts, sharply attacking one another over issues both
policy-oriented and personal.
But in asking their views on the
House’s Stop Online Piracy Act, CNN moderator John King homed in on at
least one topic that the candidates could agree on. All four
presidential hopefuls said they objected to the bill, a position that
puts them at odds with many Republicans in Congress.
Former House
speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) tackled the question first. “The idea that
we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the
Internet on behalf of giant corporations’ economic interests, strikes me
as exactly the wrong thing to do,” he said.
Former Massachusetts
governor Mitt Romney jumped in next, saying: “The law as written is far
too intrusive, far too expansive, far too threatening to freedom of
speech and movement of information across the Internet. It would have a
potentially depressing effect on one of the fastest-growing industries
in America.”
Noting that he was one of the first Republican
members of Congress to oppose the bill, Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) said that
many of his GOP colleagues were “on the wrong side” of this issue. He
cited his willingness to break ranks with his party and build a
coalition around the issue as an example of why he’d be successful in
the White House.
Rick Santorum, however, added a caveat in his
opposition to SOPA. The former Pennsylvania senator said he was
concerned that without some protections, intellectual property rights
would be at risk and that there need to be some safeguards for
copyrights on the Web.
“The Internet is not a free zone where
anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other
people,” Santorum said.
More from The Washington Post:Ten things you need to know about SOPA and PIPAE.U. Internet czar comes out against SOPACan Congress and the Web get along?A strike for the Internet age